novelty items

Things just keep getting weirder and weirder. If you read the thread in the last post, you will learn that the Balamand Foundation has yet another address, and may be connected to an "Adult" store of some sort located at that address, one that appears to be owned by a member of an Antiochian parish.

Then we learn that at the meeting +Philip had with the CA clergy on Friday, he claimed that the Archdiocese has 15-20 million invested in bonds.

Put a conservative interest rate on that.

Where is the line item for investment income in the financials?

How much of a "shortfall" is claimed?

A priest at the meeting started to bring up financial issues and +Philip cut him off and barked, "Are you accusing me of being an embezzler?"

But, of course, we can't do that. There is no audit.

+Philip has been calling folks pressing them for money to make up for supposed budget shortfalls. One priest's wife, who has spent decades raising money for AOANA causes, was left in tears after he pressed her hard for more over the phone. So the AOANA supposedly has 15-20 million in investments, but still the urgency for ten grand here and ten grand there. I pray after next week many will act: no more money to the AOANA until audits have been done, cronies fired, and irregularities corrected.

Questions concerning the Balamand Educational Foundation....

The Balamand Educational Foundation is one of the most pressed charitable efforts of +Philip and the AOANA.

I refer in this post to the 2007 990 of the Balamand Educational Foundation Inc. If you would like a copy of that tax return, please email me at owenandjoy@bellsouth.net and I will forward you a copy. One can get to it through various methods online as well, if you wish.

I also refer to the 2009 AOANA financials. If your priest or parish council member does not already have a copy, they should have them after they return from the Convention.

Please note that what follows has only to do with questions arising from the American side of things regarding the Balamand work. Balamand is near and dear to the heart of the Patriarch, and I know nothing of any alleged corruption on the Syrian side of things, my concern is with how the monies are being handled here, and with those who are handling them. There are some disconcerting questions arising from the American side of this effort, specifically with regard to the Foundation:

• The Balamand Educational Foundation Incorporated is registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The registered agent is, you guessed it, AOANA Trustee and longtime +Philip supporter Fawaz Khoury, a man previously convicted of charity fraud in which the bulk of the funds raised for a "charity" supposedly raising money for drunk driving reduction and breast cancer research were found to have been consumed by the individuals involved in the “charity.”
• In the 2007 990 tax document for the Foundation, Khoury is listed as the treasurer. The registration from the Commonwealth of Mass lists a George Atallah of Forest Hills, NY as the treasurer. Khoury is currently listed as treasurer on the Balamand Foundation website.
• The contact info on the Balamand Foundation website gives a Broomfield, CO address. The tax return for 2007 lists a Westboro, MA address, the same address given as Khoury's personal address on the Registration with the Commonwealth of Mass. The business address for the Foundation listed on the Corporate Registration with the Commonwealth of Mass is in Winchester, MA. So we contact the Foundation in CO, they pay taxes out of Khoury's place in Westboro, and they are registered with the state of Massachusetts in Winchester. Why?
• Please keep in mind that the fiscal year for the AOANA runs from Jan. 31 to Jan. 31. Thus financials listed for "2009" actually include the last 11 months of 2008 and the first month of 2009.
• According to the 2009 AOANA Financial Report, in the Section I, Theological Education Expenditures, seen on page 11, subsection b, Balamand Theological Academy & Theological Seminaries, the Per Budget 2009 figure is $100,000, the Actual 2009 figure is $83,300, and the Actual 2008 figure is $72,100.
• In the Notes to Receipts section of the same report, Note G: Analysis of Other Special Projects, page 13, reports a receipt of $25,000 under the heading of Balamand Educational Foundation.
• In the same report the Order of St. Ignatius reports, under the heading of "Statement of Project Contributions," donations of $10,000 per year in both 2008 and 2009 fiscal years.
• The special fundraiser in November of 2008, with the Patriarch in attendance, was said to have raised over 2 million dollars for the Balamand Foundation. The Archdiocese put on the event, and facilitated the contributions to the Balamond fund connected with the event (there is even an amount +Philip designated parishes of various sizes give, see here). Why is the income connected with that event not reported in the AOANA 2009 financials? Parishes had their arms twisted to contribute as directed, but there is no mention of the funds raised from this directive. Why? Simple math concerning the number of AOANA parishes would inform one that much more was given to the Foundation than what is reported by the AOANA for 2009 (remember, this includes last 11 months of calendar year 2008).
• In the 2007 990 tax return for the Balamand Education Foundation, Direct public support income for 2007 was reported at $127,000, income for 2006 was reported at $52,500, income for 2005 was $5,065, income for 2004 was $24,902, income for 2003 was $123,522.
• One question for you accountants: would money from the AOANA normally be accounted as Direct public support? Or should it rather be in the Indirect public support column? Balamand Foundation lists no income in the Indirect public support column for 2007.
• In the Balamand 2007 tax return, $70,000 was listed as spent on scholarships, $1,500 on tax fees, and $4 on banking fees. This total expenses of $71,504 is remarkably close to the $72,100 given by the AOANA that year (remember that the AOANA's "2008" includes 11 months of 2007). But Balamand Foundation donation income was over 55k greater than that figure. The rest of the money went into savings, according to the tax report. Of course, there is also the $10,000 from the Order of St. Ignatius.
• On page 12 of the 2009 AOANA financials, we read: Note A Fiscal year 2009 includes worldwide disbursements of $180,000 from Food for Hungry, $99,450 from Children's Relief and $100,000 from the Balamand Educational Foundation Fund. On the 2007 990 filed by the Balamand Foundation, it stated in line 80a that it is not related to any other organization, either exempt or non-exempt, by common membership, governing bodies, trustees, officers, etc. Is that still the case? If so, how is it that the AOANA is able to disburse funds for the Balamand Foundation? Is this irregular? Line 82a asks if the Organization received the use of materials, equipment, or facilities free of charge or below cost. They answered "no." Who printed the promotional materials Balamand used that year? Was it not the AOANA? What is the exact legal and financial relationship between the AOANA and the Balamand Foundation?
• Along those lines, in 2007 the Balamand Foundation reports virtually no administrative expenses. They report giving away an amount almost exactly that reported as the AOANA donation to Balamand, and the rest is put into savings. If the Foundation has no real expenses, why does it continue to accumulate savings each year (in 2007 their net assets were just under 240k, after only giving away 70k that year)? Why not disperse the funds to Balamand immediately? According to their literature there is no lack of need. And the raising of funds to give to Balamand is the sole stated reason for the Foundation's existence.

I am not an accountant. I suppose there could be many reasonable explanations for the matters raised above that do not involve fraud. Nonetheless, I think we can safely state thus:

• We need an independent audit of the AOANA in order to know exactly what the relationship is between the AOANA and the Balamand Foundation.
• We need to demand that the Balamand Foundation also be subjected to an independent audit if the Archdiocese is to continue to support it.
• We need to demand the obvious - that the Archdiocese will not support charities whose leaders have been convicted of committing fraud against charities.
• There is the expectation about now that +Philip will state that he is having independent audits done at the Convention. This must not be deemed acceptable. The entire process concerning these audits must not be in the hands of either +Philip or his cronies on the Board. The audit must be performed by a reputable accounting firm specializing in such audits, and the entire affair should be organized by a special committee of faithful Orthodox lawyers and accountants within the AOANA that have not in any way been associated with any of the AOANA's financial activities in the past. I am fearful that +Philip's feigned acquiescence on the matter of audits will only prolong what is needed. He has done this exact thing before.
• Choose your own adventure accounting, in the midst of gamblers and thieves, must end now. There is every indication of ecclesiastical usury going on here.
• And one more thing, a question asked many times but one which should be asked again. Who pays +Demetri's salary to the Iglesia Ortodoxa Antioquena de Mexico, Venezuela, Centroamérica y el Caribe? The AOANA? The Balamond Foundation? The Florida Condo in +Philip's brother's name fund? Miami is the capital of Latin America, or so say some. Who is paying? It is time to get the money lenders out of the temple.
  

ANAXIOS!

Antiochian monasticism speaks to the current crisis...

The following is very important. It was written by Archim. Touma, who is said to be the most influential monastic under Antioch. He is Athonite in spirituality, he leads the most traditional monastery under the Holy Synod of Antioch, and he does not normally comment on ecclesio-political matters. Note how he ends this passage: "The way of dividing, subjugating with decisions from on high, and debasing is of no avail. It will only alienate and create factions and lead to schism!" This essay means that the tide has decidedly turned against +Philip back home. It was translated last night by our favorite Arabist Samn!, and the full text first appeared over on his blog. This is serious for +Philip - the message from Syria is now quite unequivocal. Fr. Touma is a respected spiritual father who is on close terms with the Patriarch.

Samn! begins with an intro:
I started this blog with the intention of never commenting on the current controversy in the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America. In fact, for geographical reasons I’ve never been a member of that diocese and so it's hardly my place. The purpose of this blog is to increase awareness of the Arab heritage of the Orthodox Church among English speakers and hopefully to encourage love for our Arabic-speaking brethren in Christ. That said, I ran across the following comments by Archimandrite Touma (Bitar), abbot of the monastery of Saint Silouan at Douma and author of Forgotten Saints in the Antiochian Heritage, about the ecclesiological controversy which has lately flared up in the Church of Antioch. As readers of this blog might guess, I have great respect for Fr. Touma. His thoughts on the current crisis were posted on his website on July 12, and I have yet to find any notice of them on the anglophone Orthodox web. Since his words need to be heard, I will post my own translation of them here. Please, if anyone has any corrections to the translation, let me know in the comment box.

Pastoral Care and the Crisis of Power!

In the See of Antioch, at the current time, there is a confrontation, a crisis of opinion, and painful consequences may follow. Are the bishops, within an eparchy that is headed by a patriarch or a metropolitan as an ecclesial administrative unit, bishops over a territory and a faithful people, or are they auxiliary bishops (asaqifa musa’idun)?

The traditional position, within the Orthodox ecclesiological framework, makes the bishops within a single eparchy brothers and the primate (mallak) of the eparchy first of all the first among equals and secondarily the head of a local council, governed by principles and canons and made up of the bishops of that eparchy. This assumes that each of them oversees a territory and a people. In principle, bishops are not titular or auxiliaries, dependent upon the metropolitan or the patriarch.

But, historical events came about in past eras that divided some bishops from their territories and their flocks, as happened in the Byzantine Empire after the fall of some of its regions to the Ottomans. It was hoped at the time that exiled or refugee bishops would return to their regions. However, matters became more complicated and situations worsened and such bishops found themselves permanently exiled from their flocks. Or, the dioceses which they had overseen in principle were emptied of their Orthodox people.

With the passing of time, this inaugurated the custom of consecrating titular bishops who, at first, longed for military or political turnarounds that would return an Orthodox presence to their former regions. When the years went by and the winds did not blow as the boats wished, hopes changed to almost a formal etiquette, and the custom became firmly entrenched of choosing titular bishops who quickly became helpers (musa’idun) or auxiliaries (mu’awinun) to some of the actual primates of the eparchies, dependent on the patriarch. This gave birth to an unintended custom, without any ecclesiological base. However, it became accepted and enshrined in practice insofar as the ancient traditional practice among us of each bishop being the bishop of a people and a territory into decline in practice. With it, the page closed on local synods within one eparchy and it sufficed to have synods on the level of patriarchates or the equivalent.

Some circles, today, hold fast to the contingent practice over ecclesiological theology because it has become widespread and followed for many years. The temporary became permanent. Others hold to intellectual principles of ecclesiological theology and hope to rectify the current historical deviation in this situation and to return dioceses to their traditional function, especially since there exists a need, here and there, for more bishops of territory and people so that we do not go too far in making the episcopate in general only an administrative, ritual function. The bishop is the pastor par excellence and must remain so in practice.

Between those who seek this or that line of thought, today, there is confrontation and debate. It does not appear that it will result in a speedy understanding in the foreseeable future and it is to be feared that it will grow into an impasse and from there into something with an unpraiseworthy outcome.

How to get out of this dilemma?

The answer is not easy. However, if we were to put forward the reasons for this crisis, we do not find it to be simply ecclesiological or canonical in nature, but also historical, temperamental, and psychological. We have become accustomed to such with the passing of generations! It is not easy for those who have become accustomed to sole power in their eparchies and to dealing with titular bishops almost like deacons to have partners in power within the lifetime in which they work. Let us say it frankly: the problem is the problem of a power struggle! Few are prepared to let go of their prerogatives! The issue, at the base, is not ,as it is put forward, a theological issue and it is not a pastoral issue. What determines the traditional or the ecclesiological, theological or the canonical argument, at the basic level, is the holding on of each of the concerned parties to the power which they think rightly belongs to themselves and not to others. Each one brings forward this or that evidence, in reality, because it is convenient for him. If we were to hold fast to ecclesiological theology and the traditional canons, in the matter before us, then we would have to openly express only a small number of the positions we implicitly adopt or to which we consent and which are not in agreement with [Orthodox] principles.

The question of the diaspora, especially North America, is today in our opinion the foundation of the current problem and what brought to light the intellectual divide which had long remained hidden. The status of any of the Orthodox churches, the See of Antioch included, is not sound there, either from an ecclesiological or a canonical standpoint. By what right do we hold on to the dependence of the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America on us? That eparchy is no longer at the stage of just being sent out. We helped it during its beginnings, but now it is mature, and more mature than us here in its theology and its learning and its organization. By what right, then, is it assumed that it should be under our care? Is it because some of its people have left us? So what? Generations and generations have grown up there for years and the people in those lands have become American. Is it because there is a sentimental heritage which ties us to them and them to us, or because there is something like nationalist feelings which hold us to them and them to us so that they must be subject to our local ecclesial structure? This has no relation in any case to ecclesiological thought nor to the ancient ecclesiological practice which has come down to us from the Apostles and saints. Thus the practical theology which we use in this matter is faulty and unacceptable if we were to be fair and correct.

And what is to be said about the canonical disorders that we’re up to our ears in over there?

The situation of all the Orthodox eparchies dependent on mother churches in North America is uncanonical. There is one Orthodox church in those lands whose situation is sound and canonical: the American Orthodox Church (OCA). This alone is independent and autocephalous and this is de-facto recognized by the other Orthodox eparchies. Its recognition, formal or implicit, by the eparchies depending on mother churches is clear and frank confirmation that the status of these eparchies is uncanonical and unsound. If these eparchies and mother churches on which they depend were to be logical with themselves and consistent with Orthodox ecclesiological and canonical thought, in the true sense of the word, then they would belong to the OCA or would at least enter into an understanding with it and the thorny crisis of the Orthodox presence there, theologically and canonically, would end. The simplest position and the most sound is for us to leave the Orthodox in North America to themselves and to encourage them to arrange their affairs themselves! We and the other mother churches are the ones who are complicating their affairs!

Naturally, there are those who claim that the problem of the diaspora is, to a great extent, a problem of nationalist sentiment. The sentiments exist, but not to the degree that is thought. The Church in the past has dealt with nationalism-- in Constantinople, in Antioch, and elsewhere-- and she is able to deal with it in every time and place whenever proper ecclesial sentiment abounds. But if nationalistic notions eclipse concern of the Church, then this is a dangerous event and a serious deviation because we are no longer a church possessing one faith, but rather a group of tribes. The truth is that the mother churches hold on to their eparchies in North America because they do not want to be stripped of their prerogatives and their benefits and their power there. The issue of money plays an important role in this matter and likewise does political and ecclesial influence. None of this has any connection to the Church in the exact meaning of the word, not to her theology, nor to her canons, nor to pastoral care for her people nor to her spirituality.

I will return to the subject of the bishops and I will say that the hidden cause behind the debate going on between those who hold to the concept of titular, helper bishops and the concept of local bishops over a people and a territory is, in reality, related to the passions. There is struggle for power, in the worldly sense, going on, and the arguments put forth call for each to claim his own power and leadership. But we have no power to receive, rather service to give for the Church of Christ and the People of God. For this reason, if we were to be just, then we must, first and last, to put pastoral care for the People of God before ourselves and before any other standard. The struggle for power going on today is, unfortunately, on account of this pastoral care! The single legitimate and acceptable question in this context is: what is most appropriate for the care of the Orthodox faithful here and there?

For this reason it is to be hoped that the interaction of the metropolitan with the bishops within a single eparchy, wherever they may be and especially right now in North America, will be first of all with goodness, love, humility of heart, and magnanimity. The issue of the episcopate, which has long been outside the genuine ecclesiology, will not be solved by emptying it of its pastoral content and enshrining its titularity, and not by, in response, idolatrously harping on the application of cannons but rather by the metropolitan embracing the bishops as brothers, and the bishops the metropolitan. Calmly and deliberately we will become able to solve our issues in cooperation and simplicity and flexibility, relying on [Orthodox] principles, and we will raise up the People of God in truth so that God will be glorified in us. The way of dividing, subjugating with decisions from on high, and debasing is of no avail. It will only alienate and create factions and lead to schism! I say this and it is to be feared that we are in a delicate and dangerous situation. Orthodox America will not be treated in the ruinous way we are accustomed to in our lands here! If we do not leave our selfishness and our pride and build each other up with kindness and generosity and put the good of the Church and its unity and theological principles ahead of any personal consideration, whatever it may be, then worse is to come!

Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Abbot of the Monastery of St. Silouan the Athonite-- Douma
Sunday July 12, 2009

their man in havanna, or, er, well, englewood definitely ain't havanna, but still, it goes something along those lines....

photo of Hafez al-Assad (حافظ الأسد ) and +Philip.

It goes without saying, therefore, that the Arab political leadership, with the singular exception of that of President Assad of Syria, has never risen to the level of understanding and sophistication demanded by the magnitude and complexity of Arab problems.

-- +Philip, from here.

From Wiki:

[Hafez] Al-Assad inherited a dictatorial government shaped by years of unstable military rule, and... organized along one-party lines after the Baathist coup. He increased repression and attempted to secure his domination of every sector of society through a vast web of police informers and agents. Under his rule, Syria turned genuinely authoritarian. He was made the object of a state-sponsored cult of personality, which depicted as a wise, just, and strong leader of Syria and of the Arab world in general.

...Where Saddam Hussein's policies of perpetual state terrorism aimed to secure his rule through fear, Hafez al-Assad took a more sophisticated approach: rather than immediately brutalizing restive communities, his government often bribed or threatened dissidents. Only after milder forms of persuasion had failed would swords come out. Then, the government could be counted on to act with unflinching cruelty in order to intimidate all would-be dissidents.

From the basis of this picture, and the many more of +Philip and al-Assad, Americans of certain stripes start to get a little sweat above the eyebrows. Paleocons distrust any ties to foreign despots. Neo-cons like our foreign despots, and use the rhetorical T-bomb constantly with regard to those despots who are not ours. Ochlophobists just don't like men of violence, and especially don't like the Church being associated with them.

+Philip and Hafez al-Assad grew up as childhood friends.

There are some things we should remember about Syria and Middle Eastern Christianity:

• It is true that Syria is a brutal regime. But the brutality mentioned in the Wiki passage above was directed at folks who desire to eliminate Christian communities in the Middle East. al-Assad framed his whole massacre of that city as an effort to protect the town's Christians. Which is more true than one would want to admit - not that he was doing it to protect Christians but that the people he killed would've been far, far worse for Christians (or Alawites or Druze or Shiites) than the Alawites are even for Sunnis.


• Christians in Syria in general have a very close relationship with the Syrian government and see the current regime's well-being as the only hope for Christianity's future in the middle east. This seems quite reasonable - Syria is the only country that accepts Christian refugees from Iraq without restriction. Just as during the Armenian genocide, it has become the last refuge of the region's Christians.


• Even in Lebanon, the Orthodox have historically advocated Syrian nationalism as a counterweight to Lebanese (read: Maronite) particularism. And so, while a lot of middle class or educated Syrian and Lebanese Christians are strongly opposed to the Syrian regime, these are generally the people who are strongly opposed to anything other than a secular, democratic, state along either communist or American lines. Which is a bit like hoping for candy to fall from the moon. At the end of the day, because Syria is ruled by its weirdest minority, its government has to protect the other minorities who have historically been the elites- that is, Greek Catholics, Orthodox, and Jacobites. And on the foreign policy level, their alignment with Iran is better for Christians than most Americans would realize-- mostly because it puts them squarely against the Saudis, who are the devil's representatives on earth. We should remember that Iran has a surprisingly hands-off attitude towards its Christian minority, especially the Armenians.


• The hierarchies of all the Syrian churches are close with the government. Yes, the Syrian government is pretty repressive and its policies cause terrible economic stagnation. But, they also keep down the much greater evil of Sunni Fundamentalism-- and they are the only state in modern Middle East to successfully do so. They are also the only state in the Middle East where Christians are free to worship publicly without restriction and without fear of the Muslim mob. In Syria, the Muslim mob has more to fear than any other group. Current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even participates in Christmas celebrations with Syrian Christians (scroll down to the Christmas article on the link - also see Bashar hugging the Patriach of Antioch at a recent Christmas celebration).

If we were to go about questioning the context of +Philip's relationship to the Syrian state, we should keep the above in mind.

Why would we want to consider +Philip's close relationship to the Syrian state? Well, it may have some bearing on the current situation:

• Christians over there don’t really “get” the multi-jurisdictional nature of North America; they don’t understand that +Philip is one of many Orthodox hierarchs; thus, they treat him on his visits as if he’s the Patriarch of North America with ability to influence the government and everything, an impression +Philip does nothing to discourage (scroll down to picture of +Philip and Reagan on AOANA website).


• It has come to surface in recent months that the Saliba family has been at odds with at least one other family with members on the Holy Synod. Given +Philip's close ties to the Syrian state, one might wonder if +Philip would not simply call up Bashar al-Assad, complain that a certain Metropolitan is bothering him, and, before you can say “baseeta,” that Metropolitan is facing red-tape that shuts him and his Church organizations down tighter than a clamshell with a vice on it. No wonder some of these folks over there are tip-toeing around Church issues—if they misstep badly enough, it is conceivable that +Philip could pick up the red phone and their parishioners will suffer.


• It would seem quite possible that the “threats” uttered by +Philip's Arab speaking “representatives” sent to the Holy Synod meetings in Damascus this June were backed by an appeal to +Philip’s relationships.


• If one looks through old Word magazines, there is something noteworthy. Fawaz El Khoury, the Trustee who was convicted of stealing money from a breast cancer charity, has gone on every state visit of +Philip to Syria for decades now. He is also pictured with Syrian dignitaries (see also here). What role does El Khoury play in the web of AOANA/Syrian state political ties? Of course, Fr. Joseph Antypas also makes all of those trips, and he seems to have a number of longstanding ecclesial ties there.


• Of the three Metropolitans who strongly sided with +Philip in the Holy Synod, one was +Philip's cousin and another is a Metropolitan Elia who is often pictured with +Philip in old issues of Word.


• It would seem that these relationships are not maintained by a need for American money. Antioch is not the Phanar - Christian Arabs tend to be the wealthiest people in the Levant.


• Most educated Orthodox in Lebanon cursed America for invading Iraq on the grounds that Saddam protected the Christians. They are also angered at America for letting Israel level the Orthodox-majority town of Marjayoun in 2006 -- it was the Qataris, not Christians who rebuilt the metropolitan's complex there. On the other hand, there is widespread fear that America might invade Syria, install a democracy, and leave Syrian Christians to the same fate that America left the Iraqi Christians, who without Syria would mostly be dead or trying to get to Europe illegally. 7 churches have been bombed in Iraq this week. Could it be that +Philip is, wrongly, one would think, seen to have some influence upon the American state?


• Surely the Syrian government does not believe that +Philip has any influence upon American foreign policy; his ties with them have to do with personal history and shared political ideals. But it could well be that Church officials in Syria believe that +Philip has influence upon the American state. This could aid in giving him the great clout he seems to have had over there, within hierarchical circles. I wonder if the allowance of modern forms of communication, particularly the internet, might result in the wool being removed from the eyes of some...


• Then again, I don't know that we can say that money won't buy you any love in Syrian Church affairs - We shouldn't say that a strategic donation can't buy a bit of clout. In any "high-context culture" (that is, anyone who's not culturally a semi-autistic northern European), doing favors for people gets you favors, no question. Especially if they have some prior connection to you. It would seem we saw a bit of this before the February decision of the Damascus Holy Synod.


• There is also the role of +Joseph in this whole affair, especially with regard to the extraordinary phenomenon of the Holy Synod not siding with +Philip. I'm inclined to think that whatever +Joseph is thinking right now will be the key to whatever outcome there is. +Joseph, the Patriarch's godson, is the first real connection between the Holy Synod and America that doesn't go through +Phillip. I doubt that his plans have much common ground with either of the two factions' goals. This is yet another reason why the pre-conference meeting that +Philip is having with the California clergy is so important.

The Hauerwasian in me just does not have the stomach for a Church/State relationship like we see among Christians in Syria. But I am also a father, and I know that a father does what he has to do to keep his children alive. It is a situation that is sickening in its complexity and the myriad of opportunity it provides for the watering down of the witness to Christ. I am inclined to think that Christians should not so trust chariots, but I also grew up a Baptist who read a whole lot of the Old Testament as a kid, and the outline of the situation of Christians in Syria above reminds me, for a number of reasons, of the Book of Esther. I can understand why a Christian in the Middle East would view the al-Assad dynasty as a divinely appointed protection of Christian peoples. This would certainly not be the first time that Christians in the Middle East viewed brutal non-Christian leaders who showed them favor in such terms.

But then we have their man in Englewood (the title of this post, of course, refers to this novel). Graham Greene would have absolutely relished the ironies and complexities we see here. +Philip is a man who openly admires a cunning, intelligent dictator who beats all the odds and administrates a politically coherent regime. His own style of leadership obviously draws from the same themes as we see in al-Assad - a crushing of dissent, secretiveness, a lack of transparency and a notion that non-transparent rule is normative and in keeping with the dignity of being the glorious leader, and so forth. At the same time, given the context in Syria, one might have at least some empathy for the position +Philip finds himself in - one could understand how +Philip might well see himself in a divinely appointed position with regard to acting as an agent and spokesman for Christians in his homeland. But, and here the great irony, +Philip has rhetorically buttressed his leadership position [I use the term "leadership" in the current colloquial sense - I dislike the term and what it has come to stand for, mindless efficiency and obscene flattery, but I do think the term applies to the manner of +Philip's rule as a bishop], by pressing the idea and ideal of a decidedly American Orthodoxy - both aesthetically and in terms given to the urgency for an authentic indigenous manifestation of a culture both decidedly American and decidedly Orthodox.

It would seem obvious that these two postures would eventually collide, resulting in a mess. But at the same time - they, in a way, might be seen to have needed each other - +Philip's clout at home for seeming to successfully play his role as front man for Syrian Christians in the United States was almost certainly aided, in no small measure, by his ability to win American converts. Rightly or wrongly, the AOANA is seen as the convert jurisdiction in America. That +Philip was able to win so many American converts to the Church must have been seen at home as an indication of how well +Philip understands America and Americans. At the same time, the principle action that +Philip took to get him that status, the bringing in of the EOC, was achieved through means of, shall we say, a Syrian style of leadership - ignoring canons and precedent and the discipline of other Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States, and building a cult of the leader that was largely instigated by his admittance of the EOC on decidedly +Philipian terms.

The converts who came into Orthodoxy via the AOANA believed the rhetoric about an American Orthodoxy, and many of them came to have an attraction toward Orthodoxy because of such evangelistic talking points as Liturgy in the language of the people (a rather dubious apologetic point against Catholics considering that Church Slavonic and liturgical Greek are not vernacular, and from what I understand liturgical Arabic is quite different from the Arabic actually spoken by Arabs) and the wonderful fusing of Orthodox and native American cultures in Alaska (a point I think rather uncontestable). Ironically, many of these converts also brought with them the neo-conservative political views they inherited from Evangelicalism, and thus are dialectically and ideologically opposed to any relationship between their Church and the Syrian state.

While I have no interest in supporting either Syrian statism qua Syrian statism or supporting neo-conservative policies of any sort, in reflecting upon this issue I have come to have some sympathy with both sides. It has been suggested that the February decision of the Holy Synod was motivated in part because +Philip led the Synod to believe that certain crypto-Baptist elements in the AOANA needed to be spanked. He probably neglected to tell them that he, more than any other hierarch in Orthodoxy today, is the reason that crypto-Baptist elements exist in the Orthodox Church. He also probably neglected to mention that the most Protestantized parishes in his Archdiocese are those in the hands of his most ardent supporters, most of whom are Arab (which is not to say that most Arabs in the AOANA support +Philip, I speak here only of the Detroit mafia). And as for neo-con converts getting upset when they realize that their first hierarch is in bed with what they label a terrorist state (which is to say, a brutal state that does not support U.S. foreign policy) and a member of the "axis of evil," one might have some sympathy for them at least on the grounds that they were sold a bill of goods that did not quite get delivered. They thought that American Orthodoxy meant what they mean by American Orthodoxy, and they were encouraged to think thus.

+Philip is a masterful politician who has been friends with masterful politicians during his lifetime. He has been balanced upon a very narrow fence for many years now. It seems that he has been able to stay on that fence because he did not allow those from either side to speak to each other. That has ended. But I wouldn't count +Philip out just yet.

All of these issues raise, in my mind, two important questions:

What should be the relationship of Christians in the West to the Christians of the Middle East and those who protect them? It has been a longstanding Orthodox concern that we should do what we can to protect and support Christians in the Holy Land. It seems to me that we should not be quick to rush to judgment about the relationship of Christians in Syria with the Syrian state. Orthodox, such as the Russian Tsarist state, used relationships with various despots to secure stability for Christians in the Middle East in times past. I remain uncomfortable about this, as a lover of the work of St. Nil Sorsky - I do not like to see the state used to kill the enemies of Christians. At the same time, I realize that both the Byzantine and Tsarist states engaged in decided realpolitik to save Christian lives. Some of us are called to be St. Nils, others Esthers or St. Joseph Volotskys, who am I to judge? The one fundamental thing that I think important is that the relationship of the Church with the state remain transparent. There should be no secret collusions between Church and state. What hierarchs have to say to the state, and what they do for the state, should be public and forthright. I think that we American Christians have an obligation to support Christians in the Middle East in whatever manner suits are life - for most of us, this simply means prayer and the maintaining of friendships with our Arab brothers and sisters in Christ.

But there is another way of looking at this issue. When St. Nicholas of Japan found himself the Apostle to the Japanese people during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, "as a Russian patriot, he no longer served public Divine Services, at which prayers for Japanese victory had to be offered." St. Nicholas insisted that the Japanese pray for the victory of their own forces. While I don't care to get into the issue of prayer for military victory, I do think that there is a certain principle to be seen here. It may be that American Orthodox are obligated to help Christians in the Middle East, but it may also be that as Americans they want nothing to do with the Syrian regime, and do not want to participate in a Church life that is connected to Syria in prayer in a manner that St. Nicholas was so spiritually connected to the Russian state that he stopped serving public Liturgies in Japan. But it seems to me that St. Nicholas' lesson is the right one - he expects the Japanese to be Japanese. He does not expect them to be complicit with the Russian state because they are Orthodox. It seems to me that the message from Englewood has been clear over the years. The AOANA has a relationship with the Syrian state, and members of the AOANA are simply to accept this. But if St. Nicholas is to be our example, then the hierarchs of the AOANA should expect American converts to want nothing of the Syrian state, certainly not seeing any of their tithes used to secure any such relationships - even if it is just expensive dinners between hierarchs and statesmen. [Of course, we know nothing firm regarding such expenses because we have no audits.] There is a sense, following St. Nicholas, that we should see it as natural that Americans be concerned first and foremost with American interests. The Church does not demand otherwise of us - we are to love those neighbors who are immediate and present in our lives. Still, one can take this logic too far - and enter into an ambivalence regarding the suffering of others and our relationship to it. The monies that our state and corporations take from us effect the lives of mountain villagers in Lebanon, whether we like it or not. These are complex issues.

As for me and my house, as I have written before, I will have nothing to do with any state which engages in the killing of any children for political ends. Thus I view both the Syrian state and the United States federal government as hell fodder. I recognize the solid arguments for other positions and I respect them, but that is where I draw the line in the sand for the sake of my own soul. An old Catholic Worker friend of mine put it to me this way once - I would rather watch my children be killed in front of me than participate in the killing of someone else's child to protect them. My children belong to Christ. Those who kill children do not. This age is one of madness - sadistic, überviolent men abound in our day, at play with the toys their technicians give them. I wan't nothing of it. The demands of virtue and chivalry have not changed, despite the barbarianism that surrounds us. I know, I know, how quaint.

What should our concern be with regard to the development of an American Orthodoxy? In my mind, at this point, there should be no such overt concern for an American Orthodoxy as American Orthodoxy - I fear it would be too influenced by American Idol or the corporo-nationalist cult that obscenely yells USA, USA, USA at the olympics, scaring polite Koreans and the like. This is not to say that we should not work hard to secure a strong Orthodoxy in America. Many Orthodox in blogdom have written about this, notably Gabriel and Fr. Jonathan. The demands for an American Orthodoxy are fraught with ideologies foreign to the Church, and I think we need to have a more full repentance with regard to our capitulation to such ideologies. I also think that we have to frame some coherent sense of what America is, which is not an easy task, though I tell you, I have met more culturally astute folks in American Orthodoxy than I have in any other social corner of the world. As I have written elsewhere, those demanding an American Orthodoxy are not indigenous Alaskans, they are folks whose culture has become, largely, anti-culture, and we don't want to see that meshed with the Church.

At the same time, I think that there is no problem with (indeed I think that it is imperative) calling for ecclesial transparency, even if our motivation happens to be Lockean. We should have independent audits the results of which are made public. This should be done because, first, it is the right and decent thing to do, and second, because in our American context we have many different agendas present at times in the Church - the only way to prevent intrigue, calumny, and corruption is to keep everything open and fair. The more competing agendas within an organization, the more the need for transparency. Further, aside from abstract notions of an American Orthodoxy, there is simply the notion of evangelism and Church hospitality. How can American Orthodox, whether they are Arab cradles or anglo converts, find themselves in the relational life of the Church if they are subjected to insults from hierarchs for simply asking honest questions, or are disinvited to things, or are officially silenced for signing polite letters? If you want to see Orthodoxy flourish in America, it would seem obvious that Americans of all sorts be included in the life of the Church in a manner that involves the parameters of charity and right pastoral care. Secretive meetings, unaccounted for funds, politically motivated disciplines, and different rules for different persons - these are not an affront to some notion of an American Orthodoxy, they are an affront to Orthodoxy, they are an affront to Christ.

*I am greatly indebted to Samn! for much of the analysis of the situation of Christians in Syria and the Middle East and their relations to the Syrian state. Samn! did not contribute to any analysis of or questions regarding the inner workings of the Synod as that is a matter of which he stays clear. All conclusion drawn from that analysis are my own and do not necessarily reflect Samn!'s views. Any mistakes found in the post are entirely my own.

Antiochian spirituality: The Orthodox Youth Movement and the monastic revival.

I asked Samn! if he would write a brief piece explaining the Orthodox Youth Movement that I could post on this blog.

I am not one generally given to movements or to anything having to do with "Youth." I have reservations about ecumenism in general, and Arab Orthodoxy does tend toward a form of ecumenism which I find unfortunate, though certainly understandable as a socio-political phenomenon. But there is much here that I find helpful as one model of Orthodoxy engaged in a very modern social situation with a host of difficulties. I am also attempting to better understand Arab Orthodoxy, and I find this explanation of Samn!'s useful in abetting my own ignorance on these matters:

The situation in the Church of Antioch during the first part of the 20th century was rather bleak. Arab control of the Patriarchate had only been reasserted in 1899, after over 150 years of benign neglect by ethnic Greeks. In 1914, the work of the Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society would come to an abrupt end. Monasteries were becoming a place to put family members too weird to marry.

Protestant and Catholic missionaries, well-funded from abroad, were practically the only source of religious and secular education for the Orthodox population of the Levant.

In this period, however, some green shoots were sprouting up in the Church. The Orthodox Youth Movement was founded in 1942 by sixteen Orthodox students in law and medicine at the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, all between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. Their goals were huge-- their documents are peppered with the word “nahda”, renaissance. The Movement’s purpose is outlined in its six principles, unchanged since its founding:

The Orthodox Youth Movement is a spiritual movement that calls all the Orthodox believers to a religious, ethical, cultural and social renaissance.

The OYM believes that the religious and cultural renaissance lies in honoring the religious obligations and knowing the Church's teachings; therefore, the OYM seeks to spread those teachings and to strengthen the Christian faith amongst the people.

The OYM seeks to create an Orthodox culture inspired from the spirit of Church.

The OYM refers to the global Christian values in dealing with social issues.

The Movement condemns confessional fanaticism; however, sticking to the Orthodox principles is a fundamental condition to strengthen religious life and to establish brotherly ties with the other Christian Churches.

The OYM liaises with the international Orthodox youth, follows the teachings and tradition of the Universal Orthodox Church, and contributes to its ecumenical development and humanitarian mission.

The OYM received strong support from the hierarchy, and was recognized by the Holy Synod of the Church of Antioch as the Church’s official youth organization. In time, some of its members would become hierarchs, most notably one of the founding members, Georges Kodr, Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon, and the late Boulos Bandali, bishop of Akkar in North Lebanon.

Many other members would become priests or work in the Church in other capacities.

The activities of the OYM, as it developed, are in a large part educational and cultural- organizing seminars, study groups and Sunday schools, the translation and publication of Orthodox texts through its publishing wing, Manshurat al-Nur, as well as charitable activities. Additionally, the creation of the OYM coincided with and contributed to a revival of Orthodox monasticism in Lebanon, especially with the foundation of the Monastery of Saint George at Deir el-Harf in 1957, as many among the Movement’s young, intellectually oriented membership became increasingly interested in their Church’s neglected monastic traditions.

The “ecumenical” activity of the Movement is not limited to maintaining cordial relations with the other Christian groups in a region plagued with unchristian sectarian strife (it’s worth noting in passing that the MJO was founded six years after the notorious Maronite Phalangist movement). Its ecumenical activity is especially manifest in taking a strong interest in building relationships with other Orthodox churches outside of Antioch and Jerusalem, both through involvement in Syndesmos as well as through other channels. Much of this interaction with the outside world has been directed towards Francophone Orthodoxy, due to French being the former foreign power. For example, Fr. Lev Gillet was very active in working with the Movement during his lifetime. In the Antiochian Church’s monastic revival, the experience of foreign monastics played a key role. Most famously, a Romanian monk and former missionary to India, Fr. Andre Scrima guided the community at Deir el-Harf through its early years.

While the situation for Orthodox in America today differs in many obvious ways from that in Syria and Lebanon, the success of the OYM does hold some lessons for Orthodox in America. The goal of creating an Orthodox culture inspired from the spirit of the Church within a society where Orthodox are a minority even among the Christian minority is a goal to which the Orthodox of North America must aspire.

On a conceptual level, the OYM provides one particularly important lesson for youth activities in our Church. It seems that Orthodox youth programs in North America are first and foremost concerned with retention - keeping the young people in the Church, especially through and after college years, and are conceived of primarily as the Church’s ministry to the youth.

The OYM is rather the work of the youth (well, youth rather broadly defined- it includes young folks well out of college) within the Church. This difference isn’t trivial. By having the Church’s youth focus their energies outward in having a leadership role working closely with the clergy and monastics in educational, charitable, and cultural endeavors for the benefit of the Orthodox faithful and the wider society, generations of Church leaders have been formed and experience of the Church’s teachings and traditions has been raised among all the faithful.

I asked Samn! to clarify what the unfortunate phrase "global Christian values" used in the six principles means, and he wrote:

Social action based on a commitment to fighting poverty and promoting social justice that they perceive to be common to all Christians. I don't take 'values' (a word in the Arabic calqued from the English/French) to mean what it means in America-- the battle with secularism only really emerged after the civil war in Lebanon and still isn't defined (thank God!) in American culture-war terms.

I would like to learn more about this Fr. Andre Scrima, and the current state of Arab monasticism. I think there will be more material covering those themes on Samn!'s blog, Notes on Arab Orthodoxy.

ochlophobic ephemera; occasional thoughts....

My class starts a bit after 7am. In the mornings there is a mist in the air as the summer sun begins to lift the dew off of the earth. This is the most beautiful part of Memphis. Rolling hills, majestic southern pines, a quiet and humble dignity in the posture of the land, but also a bruisedness - almost the feel of Baptist camp, if the hills were a bit steeper. My 1996 Tacoma is not air conditioned, and with the windows down in the morning you can sometimes smell the pine.

I am taking pre-requisites to get into nursing school. I imagine that by the time I get through with nursing school there will be little demand for nurses, especially should the medical technocracy contract a bit, but, I am resigned to such things in life. As Fr. Hopko says, God will provide, or He won't.

My mother was a Navy nurse, and practiced until I was about 12. I take after her.

The security guard is in his early 60s and smokes immediately after opening the building. We chat a bit. He lives a few miles away. When he first told me where he lived, I asked him if he knows a man I used to work with - and, of course, he was at his house for BBQ a month or so ago, to celebrate Marco getting out of the pokey. But that is Memphis, everybody knows somebody you know.

The 5 week, 4 credit Anatomy & Physiology class I am taking right now is at a small extension campus in Frayser, Memphis' northwestern neighborhood, not known for being a safe and healthy place. I wouldn't call it a ghetto in the Detroit or East St. Louis sense of the word, at least not most of it, but it is a fairly rough place. My mom was the elementary school librarian there for 8 years, and she saw the social pathologies usually associated with such communities.

My mother, when she was doing her student teaching a decade or so ago (one of those gratuitously statist requirements, considering the number of college degrees the woman already had), taught public high school students in Orange Mound, another of Memphis' rough areas, and also at St. Mary's Episcopal school, a girl's school for daughters of the elite. I remember mom saying that many of the students at Orange Mound were better, both intellectually and in terms of their character, than those at the bourgeois training center. In Orange Mound, many of the bad apples have dropped out by the later high school years, and the ones who remain often really want to learn, and really want to find a pattern life that is stable and fulfilling, especially among the girls at that school. The girl's at St. Mary's treated my mother like a hired servant, in the manner one would expect of that sort.

Of the twenty or so students in the class I am one of three whites. The students I study with are, most of them, from areas of Memphis like Frayser. One of the ladies in my class (most of us are well past high school age) has an aunt who is an RN and lives a few blocks away from the campus. I am glad to hear of an RN who remains in that neighborhood.

There is among many black females an aesthetic of relating that I find quite, well, human. It strikes me as kenotic - one gives up "rights" for the group. A couple girls can't afford the Lab textbook, so the others always make sure that copies of the pertinent pages are made for them. Their manner of speaking to each other always acknowledges first that they belong to each other, even when they disagree. There is warmth among them that is replete with hope.

The lady from Frayser missed class last Friday - she was in court trying to get custody of her nephew, who, she believes, is being criminally neglected. She announced this at the round table study session in the library today. Immediately two other ladies in the class, both older students like me, got little notebooks out of their purses. Both of them, almost at the same time, asked for the boy's name. His name is Antonio. They would remember him in prayer. After the quiz we had in Lab this morning I heard one of them humming the tune of the hymn, I Need Thee Every Hour. I was glad to hear a Baptist among the Pentecostals. I am glad to be in the company of folks who know that they are needy, that it is a blessing to give and to receive.

I have lived in Memphis for over seven years now. I spent the first few of those years acknowledging the lack of sanity involved in moving to Memphis voluntarily. These mornings, of late, I have had the overwhelming sense that I belong to this place. It seems that my parents will fall asleep here, as my paternal grandparents did. There is a grace here. I used to think it was subtle, but that was because I am a dolt who was and frequently is numb. The grace here is not subtle - it cuts you like a knife. On plenty of days, usually after some annoyance, I desire to live somewhere else. But my heart is not anywhere else. It would seem that in Memphis grace is like humidity, it hits all of you, at least on those occasions when you have to step out of the air-conditioning. But grace must be like that in these places. God has His manner with those persons who understand the terms of the Magnificat. He hath filled the hungry with good things.

I have studied at a number of institutions - Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Public. I have studied under several quite exceptional professors, including my first mentor and the man whose vision so frames my life, an anthropologist who had studied under Eugene Nida, was a disciple of Thomas Kuhn, and was best friends with the father of modern ethnography, James Spradley. When Tom was up with the Inuit, he met the founder of the Bible college my wife and I attended, and Tom used to smoke cigars, drink whisky, and play poker with him (facts which would have horrified those who supported the Bible college in question). Tom came out of semi-retirement, having taught at such places as Brown and Berkeley and the University of MN and having managed to get himself kicked off of the faculty of a Baptist college when he first tried to pay his dues to the religion of his youth (they would later have him back, once Evangelicalism came to lust after the social sciences). Tom loved Baptist hymns, too. And I think he would understand why it is that the mornings I have spent at a community college campus in Memphis have been the best educational experience of my life.

boy, have times changed....

...At home, Mr. Assad's [that is, Hafez al-Assad, former Syrian dictator] longevity in office rested on a rigid intolerance of dissent, most starkly illustrated by the slaying of thousands of residents of Hama in February 1982 to end a swelling Islamic insurgency. His was a suspicious police state, barring modern instruments like the fax or the Internet that might somehow become tools to help undermine his government.

- from here.

A mountain of trashed casino slot machines.

It just seemed fitting.

potential future Diocese of Miami parish life conference locations:

But wait, they don't have the Ayurvedic services. Hmmm. Tough call.

wake up, lion. wake up now.

Two recent snippets from comments in the last AOANA thread.

From Hilarius:

More troubling right now (though I suspect this has been standard fare for years) is that I've read the 92 pages of reports for the convention and am appalled at the lack of financial data. The Antiochian Village report wouldn't pass muster in a small Condominium Association as to financials. $1.4M in revenues and a line item for expenditures and that's it?? I suppose one could parse out that ~40% of expenditures went for housekeeping by reading the narrative, but really? Can't we have a real summary of the financials? The other reports from such organizations [are] the same.

Heck - we used to have to provide better accounting for Christian Endeavor chapters when I was a kid, which were small fry efforts compared to these Archdiocesan organizations.

Couple that with the other problems related to Board of Trustee makeup and numbers, and [the] overall lack of humble transparency leads me to follow the advice of some to earmark all contributions for specific purposes only and keep asking hard questions.

And from the always eloquent Christopher Orr, aka orrologion:

The genie is out of the bottle. I don't expect it will be a ride without serious bumps until the Metropolitan is no longer Metropolitan, by choice or otherwise.

There an old adage about America being slow to wake, but when it does it is a roaring lion. It might have been Bismarck that said something along those lines. It was something brought up again after 9/11. I think it fits the AOA situation well, too. I think most converts were willing to go along and get along, to be obedient, to humble themselves and not assume they knew better. However, the de-enthronement of their bishops, the nonsensical reasonings for the same, the machinations preceding and since, the canonical irregularities (to say the least), the lack of financial transparency and the connections between the Metropolitan and a convicted money launderer/drug dealer who is an honorary Trustee of the Archdiocese and represented the Metropolitan at the recent meeting of the Holy Synod of Antioch... well, the lion of American Orthodox laity has been awakened and it takes seriously the teaching of the Eastern Patriarchs in response to Vatican I that "neither Patriarchs nor Councils could then have introduced novelties amongst us, because the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves."

Amen.

things fergussian

An update on Fergus (following posts on his accident here, here, here, here, and here). Fergus nearly drowned earlier this year and was left with a serious brain injury just shy of his first birthday. He is the fifth child of our best friends, Matthew and Esther Lockerby. Their fourth child, Louise (Memory Eternal!), died of SIDS several years ago. Their older children are Ian, George, and Rose.

For the past several months Fergus has been at Ranken Jordan, a pediatric hospital in St. Louis.

The experience there has been positive, for the most part. Gus has responded well to various types of therapy and treatment. His is still an injured little boy, but seemingly much more stable than when he arrived, and in an overall much better condition and disposition.

Yesterday Gus had his trach taken out, and is doing well with that. In 7 to 10 days he may be able to leave the hospital. This is sooner than what was once anticipated.

Matt has gotten a painting job in St. Louis which seems to be going well. And Matt & Esther are now renting a house in St. Louis, where they will be indefinitely as Fergus undergoes outpatient care at Ranken.

Incidentally, Matt, Esther, & family have been attending a ROCOR parish in St. Louis, where they are inquiring.

They have been richly blessed by the generosity of many people. One of their neighbors back home in southern MO sold one of his cows and gave them the proceeds. Other such stories abound.

Your continued prayers for the Lockerby family, and especially for Fergus, are very much appreciated.

and then, interpretation...

I have been told that the recent decision is to be seen as a good thing, and should be understood thus:

The bishops have both local (diocesan) and national (archdiocesan) roles. This is reflected in the title. Bp Basil is Bishop of Wichita. He is not an auxiliary. He also is a bishop of the Antiochian Archdiocese, and in that capacity he "assists" the Met in various ways. (For instance, he oversees the Western Rite Viciarate, and I think he oversees something to do with church music.)

MP also has a dual role. He's "Archbishop of New York" (diocesan) and "Metropolitan of North America" (archdiocesan).

The scuttlebutt is that both +Basil and +Mark voted for the decision.

As Christopher Orr wrote in regard to the title "Assistant to the Metropolitan" in a comment on the last thread:

"It seems so petty, especially in light of the fact that there is no tradition in all of Orthodoxy (as far as I am aware) of such a title."

But, given the language out of Damascus and the manner of the fight over it, this pettiness may have been the best deal on the table.

It seems that +Philip has blinked, and for the first time in his episcopal career, taken a substantial ecclesio-political loss. That is a good thing.

My fear is that he was willing to swallow his pride and take this loss out of the fear that were he not to do so, the pressure to get independent audits and clean up the Board of Trustees would only increase. It would seem rather obvious at this point that this recent "decision" is going to be used to attempt to quiet the discord in the ranks. But, in my opinion, until answers are given with regard to mobsters and condos, we are playing with smoke and mirrors here.

For one thing, +Philip has gone against pervious AOANA constitutional forms, and against Damascus, in recent months. What is to stop him, or his replacement, from doing so again? It seems to me that part of this problem should be addressed in the upcoming statement on the roles and duties of the Metropolitan and his "Assistant" bishops, but it also seems to me that what will truly, and finally, offer serious restraint to potential renegade Metropolitans are audits and a reform of the Trustees that does not allow the Metropolitan to unilaterally stack the deck.

I have been told by several folks with long ties in the AOANA that they saw this whole affair ending with +Philip's retirement but also with the AOANA in essentially the same state of decadence, corruption, and behind the scenes dealings we see today. The only way that this outcome will not happen is if the laity demand honesty and integrity within and throughout AOANA structures.

+Philip has taken a hit; in such a context, this Convention may be the last chance to change the AOANA from within.

pre-convention political propaganda

Things to keep in mind:

• This document does not do the most obvious Orthodox thing - it does not repent. We were told a short time ago to stop commemorating our then diocesan bishops, now we are told to commemorate an assistant bishop (the one residing in the city closest to us?) again. The commemoration of a bishop is a serious thing. One would think that the back-and-forth here would at the very least merit some explanation, an apology, and an indication that such liturgical upheavals will not be attempted again.
• No mention of dioceses.
• A two thirds majority? That's a strong message to send to a divided Archdiocese.
• This document seems to grant the semantic and functional equivalence of what +Philip is really after: codified singular administrative control.
• Thus, this sure seems to protect the status quo. When we learn how the vote broke down perhaps we will learn more of how this document is being interpreted. If there were ever a microcosmic poster child for the post-modern epistemological abyss, it is the current AOANA - with each document, we have to wait and see how it is going to be interpreted by each camp, and watch the debate over intended meanings and suggested-to-be-obvious meanings play out, etc. We also have to wonder whether or not it was forged. Good gracious.
• Did any bishop who voted for this thing vote under duress? I think that a reasonable question considering that one of our trustees was seen threatening members of the Holy Synod in Damascus and has recently been questioned by authorities for threatening emails to one of our bishops.
• This does nothing to address the Detroit problem, and the hierarch in the AOANA who protects them. Will the Synod vote as a whole on that issue?
• This does nothing to address the lack of independent audits, and the hierarch in the AOANA who refuses them. Will the Synod vote as a whole on that issue? Will the Metropolitan continue to unilaterally reject motions from the Convention floor (or have his cronies see to that for him)?
• This does nothing to address the corruption and intrigue associated with the AOANA Board of Trustees. Will the Synod vote as a whole on that issue? Would it matter if they did?
• It would seem rather safe to say that this is a pre-Convention posturing - an attempt to take wind out of the sails of those faithful who want see +Philip confronted with the effects of his own hubris and error, independent audits put in place, mobsters removed from positions of leadership, and the good ol' boys club replaced by a leadership body which actually represents the faithful of the Archdiocese.

To commemorate the local bishop is a good thing, even if you are not exactly sure what "local" means anymore, with regard to diocese. [Do we commemorate +Antoun because that was the former tradition, or because he is the bishop of our diocese? Who knows! ] And I suppose it is a good thing that this happened via a vote by the Synod, though I also suppose that event could be a posturing of sorts as well. Unilateral decisions by +Philip at this point would only fuel the fires against him. But, as I have said before, the tide has already gone out, whatever this document means the man is no longer fit to serve as an Orthodox bishop: ANAXIOS!

AOANA honors

One would think, were we talking about an institution which functions well, that by the time of the next board of trustee meeting either +Mark would be moved in some fashion or Walid Khalife asked to step down. If that does not happen, I wonder if the secretary of the board of trustees will include in his minutes of the meeting that +Mark's security detail was present. It seems rather absurd to continue to honor a man with an honorary trusteeship when one of the bishops in the Synod has to have security personnel with him in order for his faithful to feel it a relatively safe thing for him to attend such public events. Yes, Khalife did apologize for the tone of his emails, but as Fr. Joseph Antypas' later retraction of his forced apology shows, these things matter little when not followed up by actions. It is entirely possible that the always charming +Philip, in a desperate display, will "retire" Khalife before or during the Convention, but as we have seen, friends of +Philip often don't stay retired for very long. It seems that the one overarching rule of discipline in the AOANA is this - so long as you remain completely loyal to +Philip, you can do whatever you want.

ANAXIOS!

top ten reasons for walid's early summer trip to damascus

10. Back home in Detroit, they love to take pictures of tourists in holy places.

9. Many of the folks in the group are not felons. That helps keep things looking more legit.

8. Fawaz only has bad luck when he travels to South America. And he was under strict orders not to pack too many clothes or shoes.

7. People understand "good behavior" here.

6. Gets to travel with Economos Antony Gabriel, who also loves to get creative with modern forms of communication.

5. The hierarchs in the Holy Synod here aren't like the wimps we have back home. Here, when you threaten them, you don't have the cops show up a few days later.

4. Speaking of which, in Syria one does have opportunity to "share ther views face to face with other people" - and it is a little bit easier to introduce people to the devil here. All for the cause of "good behavior," of course.

3. There is no FBI in Syria.

2. But there is still email!!

1. Our leader and "father of the Archiodiocsese of North America" sent us. "[N]obody has done anything without his supervision and leadership."

Photo of Walid Khalife, Dan Braun, Kory Warr, and William Morrison, taken in Syria this June.

ANAXIOS!

free range crape-myrtle

My next door neighbors' Crape-myrtle, or Lagerstroemia. I happen to like a good lager. This picture does not do it justice (of course not, I took it). The tree stands about 22-23 feet tall. I love what these trees do when not constrained by shears, as they usually seem to be. Prim and proper Crape-myrtles are also pretty, but they do not knock your socks off like my neighbors' tree does. Right about now is this particular tree's prime time of year.

the bashful voice of Memphis

Somehow I missed it.

I noticed today that I had heard today's Sho-Nuff Country program several times before. For those of you misfortunate ones, Sho-Nuff Country is the greatest radio program in the history of humanity, hands down. It airs on WEVL out of Memphis. You can listen online. The DJ is the most humane of radio voices, Bashful Bob. It airs Wednesdays from 10am-2pm. I bothered to enquire about the repeat situation today and learned that Bashful Bob retired from broadcasting in February, and WEVL is continuing to air old broadcasts during the normal time slot. May God grant Bashful Bob many years!

Before some young, crass, nihilistic, moron of a DJ convinces WEVL to replace Bashful Bob repeats with some Eurotechnorave or some such nonsense (WEVL is an independent, community station, and plays all sorts of music), I commend listening to Bashful Bob's reruns each Wednesday. They will help you to become a better person. As far as I know, one has to listen between 10 and 2 (CST) on Wednesdays, as there are no archives that I can find on the WEVL site.

The photo is of Bashful Bob & Porter Wagoner.

economic ecumenism

I happen to be partial to Leo XIII on modern labor issues. The RC social doctrine bothers me to the extent that it sometimes references what "the world" needs in the sense of the apparent promotion of some sort of Church driven agenda which might "change the world," but, insofar as Catholic social doctrine teaches that which is meet and right with regard to the Christian obligations we each have, then I find it useful.

Gabriel posts on BenXVI's latest encyclical. I post his post here in its entirety, as I sometimes do. I have not read the encyclical yet, but I will soon.

Some Notes on "Charity in Truth"

Caritas in Veritate is out. You won’t have to look hard to find web-logs and other “authoritative” sources telling you or, more specifically, “good Catholics,” how to read it. Whether these hermeneutical principles can be supported by the text of the document itself is another matter entirely. Even though the document mentions that “[t]he [Catholic] Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim ‘to interfere in any way in the politics of the State,’” it in no way discards the longstanding practice that encyclicals, particularly in the Catholic confession, proclaim truths on the basis of doctrine. In short, Christians and, for present purposes, Catholics, will perhaps long to read the words of Benedict XVI as “advice,” “opinion,” or “ruminations”; the thought that they may express something—perhaps many things—absolute on the basis of what has been revealed in the Scriptures and passed on from the time of the Apostles to the present day is discarded a priori.

Given certain limitations of time, it is not possible for me here to delve into the particulars of Caritas in Veritate nor to mount a robust defense of its teaching. It is, at this point, not entirely clear to me that it contains teachings which ought to be robust defended, though I believe it is undeniable that it approaches its subject matter from the right angle. To phrase it differently, I have no quarrel, nor do I believe anyone who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord can quarrel, with the Christian anthropology that is at the heart of the encyclical. Some Protestants, being consistent Protestants, and some Orthodox, being willfully daft, will reject almost everything in the document on the basis that it came from the pen of a pope. So, if Benedict XVI were to write that an equilateral triangle is comprised of three sides of equal length with all of its internal angles equal to 60 degrees (for a grand total of 180 degrees), the consistent Protestant may reject it because such a claim cannot be found in Holy Writ, just as the anti-papist Orthodox would for the fact it demonstrates “soulless rationalism” and isn’t sufficiently “mystical.” I fear this type of rejection will be no less true with it comes to lines like, “Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is ‘his,’ what is due to him by reason of his being or acting,” or that we should “liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways.”

On the latter point concern ideologies, let’s be clear: economics, as it is often taught, accepted, regurgitated, and applied today, is at its core ideological. Indeed, any discipline which relies on anthropological assumptions divorced of either noetic or pneumatic experience are ideologies through and through. With respect to economics in particular, those who adhere to certain “schools,” particularly ones which reject empirical testing (despite the fact they are concerned exclusively with immanent reality) and disdain all questioning of their premises, are easily the most upsetting to a stable understanding of man, his relations, and his ends—ends which do not terminate in the world, but transcend it. This does not mean that economics is a dangerous or even useless discipline. There is much that economics can tell us about efficient production, the allocation of resources, the relative value of particular goods and services, etc. It is when economics is distorted and turned into a tool for not simply positive analysis, but prescriptive commands for the unquestioned pursuit of wealth and superabundance that problems begin to arise—problems which, arguably, most are blind to absent a proper, non-ideological anthropology.

Caritas in Veritate does not so much supply a Christian anthropology as much as it relies on that which has been understood in the Church from the time of Christ to the present day. (I challenge anyone to find a single anthropological claim made in the document which does not cohere with the shared witness of Catholics, Orthodoxy, and even some Protestant confessions.) It is from this anthropology, this understanding of man created in the image and likeness of God, called to be good and faithful servants of Jesus Christ that Benedict XVI seeks to unpack what ought to be the ethical bases of human development in the world—in particularly, a globalized one. This compels the Roman pontiff to reflect on a number of present realities, not the least of which being the great disparities in wealth which exist worldwide, the impact of mass industrialization on the environment (a matter which transcends the sometimes nauseating debates over “global warming”), and the fact that global economic development carries with it a number of implicit and explicit demands which may indeed have a corrosive effect on community, family, and the lives of individuals. It’s nothing anyone wants to hear; and it is barely anything people can stand to tolerate outside of the inane ramblings of a few Leftists. And yet here is the pope, a man reviled in as many circles as he is praised for his “traditionalism,” telling the world that “[t]he economy needs ethics in order to function correctly” based on “internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust.”

But it’s also important to be clear here: the encyclical is not a high rhetorical lashing of global capitalism. It is not a salvo against the “north” in the name of the “south” and it eschews the “dependency thesis” which runs through the thought of everyone from neo-Marxist to liberation theologians. There is still talk of what Christians owe not just to each other, but to all persons, in the name of Christ. Those who believe they can have their “joyless pursuit of joy” and their place in the Sunday pew will find parts of the encyclical disconcerting, though only if they read closely. That is, there’s a distinct absence of “hellfire and brimstone” in the document—just as there has been a distinct absence of such things from papal documents for a number of decades. It is possible for Catholics (and, indeed, all persons) to read it and remain complacent. The nervousness over what certain pronouncements could mean will abate as quickly as any nervousness a person might have when they hear the Gospel preached. No one, not the least me, expects that Caritas in Veritate will “change the world” or even sufficiently touch enough hearts that global economic policy will be reformed today, tomorrow, or even in the next decade. Only the possibility of harsh, immanent effects spurs most to change; the decay of man’s proper place in the cosmos has not seemed to matter at the macro-level for the better part of two centuries. But the pope’s encyclical is far from a useless document or a mere exercise in indignation. It could, I believe, remind some of a few fundamental truths which are easily obscured. In being reminded, they may not be able to alter the course of world events, but they may take the 25th Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel more seriously.

+Philip's trifecta...

On a couple of recent posts I have made a comment regarding there being three felons on the AOANA Board of Trustees, and several folks have emailed me asking who the third was, as there has been much talk of Fawaz El Khoury and Walid Khalife. To be fair, Walid Khalife is an honorary member. Antiochianinfo.org states that aside from being an active member of the board Fawaz El Khoury serves "on the nominating committee for the 2009 Archdiocesan Board of Trustees, which is charged with screening candidates for the Board of Trustees."

The third felon is +Demetri. On page 50 of the AOANA Annual Financial Report, for the year ended January 31, 2009, +Demetri is listed under the "Officers and Trustees." See here, or ask your priest for a copy. +Demetri as trustee concerns me less than the other two. Whatever service he provides as an officer of the AOANA and one who attends trustee meetings happens to occur because he remains a bishop. But even were we to set aside the question of his restored place in the AOANA hierarchy, it still seems grossly imprudent that serious felonies apparently have no bearing upon the consideration as to whether or not one is deemed fit to serve as a trustee or officer of the AOANA.

western allegiances...

I had noticed what seemed to be an absence of Western Rite voices in the current AOANA crisis and wondered about it.

Now we hear from ocanews.org a Western Rite voice on the matter:

In an email to clergy of the Antiochian Western Rite, the acting Vicar-General Fr. Edward Hughes writes:

“Metropolitan Philip, our Bishop and Spiritual Father, has asked us not to involve ourselves in this issue in any way. He has stated several times that he feels that this is a matter between the Patriarch, the Metropolitans and our Bishops. Our involvement would be seen to be interference or meddling in what is not our business. The specifics and details of the ministry of particular bishops is not the business of the other clergy who serve the same Metropolitan.

Fr. Edward Hughes”

I generally make it a point not to comment on things Western Rite on this blog, as to avoid a controversy I care little for. I do take in the occasional Western Rite blog; some are quite interesting and edifying, others reveal a posture which might cause the reader to wonder why it was the writer ever bothered to become Orthodox, of any Rite, with constant griping about anyone who expresses even reservation with regard to ecumenism with Roman Catholics and Anglican groups or whom ever, in any manner criticizes any aspect of St. Augustine's thought, and so forth. But, of course, any talk like that gets one labeled as "online Orthodox." Hmmm.

In any event, not to bring up the Western Rite for the sake of bringing up the Western Rite, as this is something I do not care to do, but, rather, to bring up the Western Rite for the sake of discussing an aspect of the current ecclesio-political context, this occurs to me:

Where on earth will the Antiochian Western Riters go without +Philip, +Antoun, & Co.? That is, if the AOANA crumbles, or eventually joins the OCA, or some such? Yes, ROCOR has a Western Rite, but they handle things, well, they handle things. From what I can gather, it seems many Antiochian Western Riters would feel a bit uncomfortable in a ROCOR Western Rite environment. +Jonah has begun to soften to the Western Rite, and his rhetoric on the matter has suggested a more positive view on his part, but given statements +Jonah has made, it would seem to me that any allowance +Jonah might make with regard to a Western Rite would make demands of praxis that lean more toward those ROCOR makes than the, uhm, well, relative free-for-all that we hear is found in the AOANA Western Rite (I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin', as they say), but that is only my own opinion on the matter. The fact is that outside of the AOANA, Antiochian Western Riters can be assured that they will have no more leniency than they have in the AOANA, and they could probably expect demands for a more strict praxis anywhere they go, to varying degree. And, of course, as of right now, the only place they would have to go is ROCOR.

I wonder, if there where to be a mass exodus of faithful from the AOANA, and some Western Riters, specifically a Western Rite parish or two, wanted to leave, if the OCA would extend an invitation. I am told that from Western Rite parish to Western Rite parish, and among Antiochian Western Riters, one finds quite a range of visions regarding what the Western Rite should come to look like. So it would seem that perhaps some AOANA Western Riters would be happy to go ROCOR if ROCOR would have them, and for others, this would be the last thought in the world they would entertain. I recognize that there is no aspect of contemporary Orthodoxy that is more rhetorically inflated than the matter of the Western Rite, for the obvious reason that there are so very few Western Rite parishes and monasteries, and the great hope and promise for evangelism and growth the existence of the Western Rite seemed to promise has not yet been realized and shows no signs of change on that front in the immediate future. But I wonder if some of the issues of the Western Rite would not come to a certain fruition as this crisis plays out. One could reasonably foresee a more uniform and traditional praxis across the board if all or most Western Rite parishes move closer to the ROCOR model. One could also see the matter of controversy caused by some of the "issues" surrounding the Antiochian Western Rite become rather inconsequential, if the AOANA Western Riters stand firmly behind +Philip & Co. should the +Philip & Co. boat become more and more a farce within world Orthodoxy, that ecclesial place from which many faithful Orthodox souls flee. For at that point, who will care what Rite they sing their own dirge?

Something to ponder.